As we already know, the performance of DOOM 3 for Mac in comparison to its Windows counterpart is a little depressing – but those tests were on a Mac running Panther. Now running Tiger, some have seen an incredible performance boost. A clean install of both the latest Tiger beta (8A414) and DOOM 3 saw a steady 35-40 FPS at 1024×768 on High quality, with 2x Anti-aliasing enabled. Quite an improvement over Panther.
Tiger to bring improved 3D gaming performance
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Eugenia Loli
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These seem to be the comparative wintel numbers for those who are curious:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2149&p=7
Michael
they always copy and paste the beginning of articles that they link to.
Those are still pretty low scores … if you read the comments on the site posted, the raging Mac lunatics are drooling over those “awesome” scores, saying stuff like “these games will ROCK!”.
Yeah, 35-40 FPS @ 1024×768 w/ 2x AA really rocks my boat. š Give me a break.
so now we can play doom 3 at a higher fps on osx? ;P
doom 3 sucks anyways.. but its good that the 3d stuff on macs is getting better.
Beyond the graphics, it looks like Doom 3 is a fairly mediocre gameplay at best…I’m not too enthused about it on any platform. Although, I’d say that 35-40 FPS is pretty sufficient to ‘enjoy’ the game.
But every release of OS X I’ve put on my iMac has made it run faster and more stable. In the 2 years and 4 months we’ve had our iMacs (800 MHz 17″ LCD), we have only experienced one kernel panic, on my machine right after installing 10.3. That was right after 10.3 came out, and it has run smoothly ever since, 24×7.
I welcome Tiger. The $199 price tag for the family pack license is nice, and I know it will make the two iMacs run even faster and better than they do now.
I play like one or two games a year. Last year it was Splintet Cell and Doom3.
I really enjoyed it and will get Quake IV when it comes out. My brother plays a lot of games but I none seem as good as Doom to me.
It’s not that the perormance now is “great” with doom3 but at least apple is doing something about it…
Although, I’d say that 35-40 FPS is pretty sufficient to ‘enjoy’ the game.
Yeah, but you’ll pretty much always get 35-40 FPS if you wind the resolution down far enough.
For what the machine’s meant to be worth, the performance is still pretty unexciting.
For the price of one dual G5 such as the one used in the tests, the performance is abysmal. I love the Mac apologists and their excuses.
Splinter cell is fun.. I just dont like the gameplay in doom3. its horribly boring. half life 2 is fun though ;P q4 will probably be decent.. I really wasnt even all that impressed with doom3 graphics. *shadows! yippy!*
It looks light i was right on the money:
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=10038&offset=30&rows=45#3…
Maybe I just don’t get it, but I’ve always found computer games unsatisfying. I usually get bored with them after a half hour or so. Most of my Mac friends feel the same way, none of the Mac users I know are gamers. Maybe that says something about Apples user base. Macs suck at games ’cause most Mac users don’t get into playing games.
Who knows.
Quote: Maybe I just don’t get it, but I’ve always found computer games unsatisfying. I usually get bored with them after a half hour or so. Most of my Mac friends feel the same way, none of the Mac users I know are gamers. Maybe that says something about Apples user base. Macs suck at games ’cause most Mac users don’t get into playing games.
I know a lot of big name titles were ported to the Mac but you gotta admit, the library of Mac games is vastly smaller than the PC side. So… don’t you think maybe the lack of Mac gamers is due to the erm… lack of games? There’s definitely a statistical relationship there.
“If you build it… they will come.” Hehehe, couldn’t resist. But it makes sense right?
Well I don’t play that much. So I like the controls to be fairly straight forward. My brother laughs at me because of my lack of dexterity.
I will say that there were some lame parts in Doom, like the Hell stage. Also the first half of the stages were better than the last stages. It was like they rushed those stages.
I think what I liked about the game was that it was immersive in the beginning. I felt like I was in a horror movie. After playing for 4 straight hours I would actually get a little jumpy.
I will also say that the game play is completely scripted. No A.I. or at least none that I could see.
Was going to try Half-life but I see it has to be activated and I really don’t want to encourage activation.
maybe the apples need a better video card ?
has anyone considered that at all ?
http://www.linux-noob.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=951&view=findp…
cheers
anyweb
Good job to Apple for improving the performance of their OS. Now if they would just price their hardware lower.
Price their hardware lower?
I think you mean supply their computers with less so that you don’t have to pay as much. Apple’s prices are among the best in the industry. The problem is that there are fewer options to buy at varying levels of performance, software inclusion etc etc etc.
When you match a Mac with the exact same (or as close as possible) set of features in both hardware and software to a PC, the Mac typically comes out less.
Most people don’t realize that because they don’t compare all the included features because they might think its not as important… (or not as important to them).
Apple’s prices are not out of sync with the PC industry… their configurability at the initial buying stage is however. Unfortunately that causes people to think that Macs are priced dis proportionately because PCs allow you to buy less and spend less, buy more and spend more and (the most important of all) buy different and spend less.
Apple seldom if ever comes out lower. On some items they are competitive on others they are far more expensive.
Personally I think that the new iMacs are priced VERY competitively, but the Power Mac’s are expensive.
Notebooks are pretty good too but they don’t actually offer a powerful notebook. I am sorry but a 167Mhz system bus just does not cut it. Right now Apple does not offer a powerful notebook.
The other problem with Apple is that they can’t be everything to everyone. X86 hardware has just so much more breadth of offering, from white boxes, to e-Machines to AlienWare spec. And no Apple does not offer anything remotely resembling an Alienware especially their notebooks. I mean you can get a RAID notebook from Alienware.
>Apple seldom if ever comes out lower. On some items they are competitive on others they are far more expensive.
In my experience, that isn’t true but thats only because I’m comparing every aspect of the computer… something most comparisons lack onfortunately. The average comparison typically compares only the hard drive capasity, processor, ram and only certain aspects of the connectivity ports. of course thats not a fair comparison.
The only exception to this rule is Apple’s powerbook lineup. They are in desperate need of an upgrade IMHO.
>Personally I think that the new iMacs are priced VERY competitively, but the Power Mac’s are expensive.
I’ve done several comparisons such as this and have found this not to be the cause. most people are comparing pre configured PCs to pre configured Macs. On the surface, this might seem like the most logical way to compare systems, unfortunately, no PC manufacturer has a setup that matches Apple’s exactly. More in some areas less in others. But this only reinforces my point about Apple’s computer’s simply being less configurable at the initial buying stage. PCs allow you to buy less and spend less, buy more and spend more and (the most important of all) buy different and spend less.
>The other problem with Apple is that they can’t be everything to everyone.
Apple offers a line of computers the addresses the needs of most consumers. Apple does include a bit more than the standard PC configuration in the same price category thus allowing them to increase their price a bit… which infortunately only reinforces the notion that Macs are more expensive.
So there, 35-40fps on Doom3. Seeing how Doom3 only uses a single CPU on my dual G5 I’d say it should be pretty much similar to my AthlonXP 2400+ with similar graphics hardware (I got the 2GHz. dual G5 with stock Radeon9600). Doom3 on my Athlon is totally unplayable at anything over 640×480 so I’d be happy to get 40fps on my Mac even if that isn’t top notch and I paid too much for it.
However I never bought this Mac to play games in the first place. I use it for page layout, heavy duty photoshop, webdesign and occasional video editing, tasks for which it’s second to none. And yes I have *extensive* experience using Windows for doing page layout jobs and photo editing (huge >1GB photo editing jobs that is). In fact I used to think my Win2K machine gave me much more bang for the buck in the layout/photoshop department compared to Macs. I’ve never been more wrong about computers in my whole life.. the difference usability makes!!
Anyway, if I want to play games I’d rather spend a couple of hundred Euro’s on a good console and a set of good games. That’s still way cheaper than going the PC/Mac route and I don’t know about you guys.. but my TV is bigger than my computer screen and my proper hi-fi set gives off a much more immersive sound experience than computer speakers ever could. So please.. quit the “mine’s bigger than yours” game already. My living depends on my Mac, so it better be seriously fast at doing that which makes me money. If I want to play, I’ll buy a Nintendo.
it’s depressing that in Doom 3 a $500 Athlon-XP will wipe the floor with the most expensive desktop that Apple sells.
Get off the dope man, we use our computers to actually do work, not waste our lifes playing crud. Yes, Macs are not what you want to buy if your life revolves around games, but who cares? If you enjoy doing nothing with your life, you should be buying a darned console anyway.
You have to really get into Doom3’s environment to like it.
For me, it’s the first time a game was actually scary for me.
The only other game that really got me was Myst, and that was more eerie than scary.
While I would agree with out, nobody is trying to spin anything… we were just correcting a misleading comment.
With that in mind, your comment was somewhat trollish because the article is illustrating that the problems associated with games being written for x86 and all its hooks then ported to PPC will no longer suffer from the performance disadvantages associated the porting of a game from one architecture to another.
“While I would agree with out” was supposed to say “While I would agree with you”
Those aren’t even in the ballpark of being “comparative numbers”. First, they are taken with a GeForce 6800 Ultra. The G5 in the article has a Radeon 9800. That GeForce is literally two or three times faster than that radeon. Plus, the tests you linked to are run without AA. 2x AA at 1024×768 is a whole lot more intensive than 1280×1024 with no AA. 30-40fps under those conditions, with that graphics card, is actually a really good score.
“Apple seldom if ever comes out lower. On some items they are competitive on others they are far more expensive. ”
The emac comes to mind. I don’t see how it’s priced competitively with low end pcs, considerings it’s SDRAM and slower processor speeds. Particularly now with the Mac Mini out. Also, I don’t understand the need in these comparisons to put OS X against XP Pro rather than Home edition, considering few home users need the extra features in Pro. People shouldn’t be expected to shell out more money for features they don’t need and won’t use.
>The emac comes to mind. I don’t see how it’s priced competitively with low end pcs, considerings it’s SDRAM and slower processor speeds.
You would be right if we compared hardware to the exclusion of software. once you add on equivilents to each of the iLife apps and then upgrade Windows XP to Windows XP professional, the price is very similar.
>Also, I don’t understand the need in these comparisons to put OS X against XP Pro rather than Home edition, considering few home users need the extra features in Pro.
If the comparison is to what is the perceived necessities are rather than what is actually included then you have a point, but the comparison is based on what is actually included… not to what is supposedly most ideal for some consumers as opposed to others.
This is Apple’s real problem. Apple gives you more and you pay more. PCs allow you to buy less and pay less… or buy different and sometimes pay less. That does not illustrate the PCs price advantage… it illustrates the PCs configurability advantage at the initial buying stage.
Macs *do* cost less than comperably equipped PCs. The trick which so many people that take issue with the statement is that the PC must be comperably equipped… and not equipped with more in some areas and less in others.
>People shouldn’t be expected to shell out more money for features they don’t need and won’t use.
Apple has different prices for different computers in different price points. They offer technologies that does increase the price (though not disproportionally to PCs) in hopes of showing consumers that they may be able to benefit from these included features despite thinking to the contrary.
Apple’s problem is not that they don’t have a computer priced to match a PC in every major product category. Its the perception that their computers cost more for the same hardware as compared to a PC… despite providing you with more to justify the slightly increased price tag over that of the PC with the slightly decreased functionality.
“This is Apple’s real problem. Apple gives you more and you pay more. PCs allow you to buy less and pay less… or buy different and sometimes pay less. That does not illustrate the PCs price advantage… it illustrates the PCs configurability advantage at the initial buying stage.
Macs *do* cost less than comperably equipped PCs. The trick which so many people that take issue with the statement is that the PC must be comperably equipped… and not equipped with more in some areas and less in others. ”
You make some good points there. Hadn’t heard it expressed quite like that before. But shouldn’t Apple have a different strategy toward the low end (Mac Mini, emac) than they do for the high end machines?
So I have always been a Mac user. Funny thing, sticker shock: I was shopping for a PC for work a week ago and told to buy a Dell. The machine is being used for WMP 10 and a couple of our customers multimedia apps.
I hit dell.com and looked at the lowest end model. $300 was a bit more than all the osnews and /. posters promised, but not bad. Then I called to see what it would cost to get Firewire added to it since I didn’t see that option. It would have taken a machine costing three times that and packed with tons of things we didn’t need. The things come with a parallel port but no FW? My take: $600 for FW? You have to be joking.
Now then, I’m considering buying a PC after all these years. Why? Games. One game, actually, World of Warcraft.
The problem might be that this would be hard to benchmark. Video card vs processor vs memory speed vs network speed vs all consuming lag.
I’m looking for a computer at console price (and size as well?) that could do over 1024×768 (hopefully 1600×1200) full speed with most graphics options (viewing distance has to be at max).
I would prefer to build my own, but don’t want to spend money on something that won’t satisfy, and don’t want to waste money where it isn’t needed. Any suggestions from the gamers here?
Is World of Warcraft still closed?
It would be sad to buy a PC just for that, and not be able to get in.
I’m looking for a computer at console price (and size as well?) that could do over 1024×768 (hopefully 1600×1200) full speed with most graphics options (viewing distance has to be at max).
You have got to be kidding…. Consoles are sold for about $200. Good luck finding a computer for $200 that can play games at 1600×1200. heck, good luck finding a computer for $200 that runs today’s software acceptably.
So some day Apple ~may~ release a computer/OS capable of running last year’s games at a mediocre rate? I’m unimpressed.
-Bob
//Now then, I’m considering buying a PC after all these years. Why? Games. One game, actually, World of Warcraft. //
Uhh … WoW is availble for OS X … http://shop.blizzard.com/section1/?user=kVHgxeEgJFnW061j4gxcQmei32E…
So some day Apple ~may~ release a computer/OS capable of running last year’s games at a mediocre rate? I’m unimpressed.
What do you expect? We’re talking about a community that holds up as thier almighty gaming benchmark Quake 3… Something rapidly approaching 5 years old… Which appears to be the only game they can do FPS faster than a PC on, which is likely because nobody I know even bothers RUNNING that on a PC anymore, much less optimize for it.
Tly hit it on the head – generally die-hard gamers don’t buy macs, so of course it’s going to lag behind x86… Doesn’t help that for all the hype OpenGL is NOT the api of choice for PC gaming doesn’t help. For every openGL based game that comes out, you see ten DirectX games that will likely never be ported. Far Cry, Half Life 2…. Not gonna happen…
It’s like the big thing that’s always bothered me about the Mac – it’s ALWAYS lagged behind on graphics capabilities, but for some reason ‘graphics’ people prefer it and have touted it’s graphical capabilities… Never made a whole lot of sense.
I wonder if Id designed their game to run best on a machine with 32 64bit registers, I wonder how’d they cry and complain about their x86 crap then.
Lucky Id doesn’t design for Apple and port to the x86.
Apple’s latest drivers, 10.3.9 have been tuned to run World of Warcraft.
That news has been on Macrumors for some time.
Good point there… More registers usually means more data you can work on without resorting to accessing memory, not needing to push/pop the stack as often resulting in faster programs… I’ve often wondered if part of the poor performance of GCC on the PPC stems from it not being originally meant to work with having so many registers available… I suppose that would all hinge on how the PPC port of GCC generates the code it hands off to GAS.
Perhaps one of you mac heads could answer that – how effective is register use under GCC for the PPC? Does it even DO optimizations for having more registers available?
>But shouldn’t Apple have a different strategy toward the low end (Mac Mini, emac) than they do for the high end machines?
Apple took an interesting strategy with the Mac mini. Rather than remove internal components to lower the price as most PC manufacturers do, Apple was concerned about diminishing the overall user experience so they kept all the functionality, used hardware specs that are a couple years old (no matter… most computers are too powerful for most people anyways) and then slimped on keyboards, mice and displays to the point that they’re not even included. The genius in that is that move is that it addresses the need for people to buy less and spend less while not really diminishing the overal user experience. More major PC OEMs would be wise to duplicate the business model IMHO.
>Which appears to be the only game they can do FPS faster >than a PC on
Not against an AMD’s Opteron x52/Athlon 64 FX (E stepping). Refer to http://www.barefeats.com/mac2pc.html
Anyway, if I want to play games I’d rather spend a couple of hundred Euro’s on a good console and a set of good games. That’s still way cheaper than going the PC/Mac route and I don’t know about you guys.. but my TV is bigger than my computer screen and my proper hi-fi set gives off a much more immersive sound experience than computer speakers ever could. So please.. quit the “mine’s bigger than yours” game already
As you might know the hi-fi forest is a lot bigger with even more pitfalls.Some (AV)-amplifiers around 1000 euro are better on any front than some 10000 Euro counterparts.It’s a lot easier to buy or assemble an PC.Analoque,personally i favor to get the most out off anything for the amount off cash i’m able to spend.For me the x86/x86_64 trail has the best cost/benefit ratio besides keeping the greatest amount of options open in terms of hardware compatibillity,operating systems to play/work with,largest community,biggest software thrust..
However if i had to make a living with apps that work best on MacOSX , the choice is easily made,i would at least have a mac to,not for the i-tunes (like SACD’s better).
I might point out that the current Quake3 IA-32 doesnāt utilise SSE3 e.g. it has enhanced float/integer conversion instructions.
>The consept of games as you all know are for children(SNIP)
Note, certain game contents are not suitable for young children. With any form of entrainment medium, there are target markets for different age groups NOT just the “children” market.
“graphics people” tend to use macs, because of tradition. The traditional mainstream graphics/dtp started mostly on mac so the whole enviroment was and is very mac-friendly. Ease of use was unmatched in the early days. PC have catched up in terms of software and speed (surpassed macs here)… Anyway, humans tend to stick to working solutions.
“graphics people” is a wide area, IMHO. The more realtime-graphics you do, the more you will tend to PCs i guess. The majority of the traditional dtp folks will stick to mac.
I dunno what apple does, but macs have always lacked the last bit of speed in realtime-graphics esp. since OS-X appeared. Maybe because Apple is more conservative. I guess there are tons of reasons. (see previous posts)
One last thing:
Those reality-distortion-field-victims apple-users seem to *defend* their platform, but in reality they do the exact opposite: They hurt the platform by ignoring facts! So lil’ Apple thinks everythings OK, which it isn’t.
btw. I use Macs since ’95 – so please no stupid “pc-user talking crap”-bashing here.
runs fine on MacOS X. No need to buy a PC.
“Apple’s prices are not out of sync with the PC industry… their configurability at the initial buying stage is however. Unfortunately that causes people to think that Macs are priced dis proportionately because PCs allow you to buy less and spend less, buy more and spend more and (the most important of all) buy different and spend less.”
Doesn’t this sound like an incredibly foolish marketing strategy on Apple’s part?
Why won’t they give consumers more flexibility, rather than force them to pay more than they need (to get more than they need), or pay less and get less (than what they may actually need)?
“Apple offers a line of computers the addresses the needs of most consumers. Apple does include a bit more than the standard PC configuration in the same price category thus allowing them to increase their price a bit… which infortunately only reinforces the notion that Macs are more expensive.”
Well, not knowing much about either Apple or Dell (I’ve never had either brand) I went to both sites and looked at some prices for basic machines like I might buy:
Comparing the Single 1.8Ghz G5 to a Dell Dimension 4700.
Processors – 1.8Ghz G5 vs. 3.0Ghz P4
Hard drive – 80gig sata vs. 80gig sata
video – 64mb FX52000 vs. 128mb ati X300SE
memory – 256mb ddr400 vs. 512mb ddr400
optical – 8X dvdrw vs. 16X dvdrw (dual layer)
sound – integrated? vs. SB Audigy w/ FW port
speakers – ?? vs. 5.1 w/ subwoofer
input – kb/mouse vs. kb/mouse
OS – OSX vs. XP Pro
software – Iapps? vs. MyDVD
Price – $1499.00 vs. $982.00
A $517 difference in price is quite a lot. It would seem like one could buy whatever the Dell may be lacking in software compared to the Apple machine.
Is there something that I’m missing here that accounts for the huge difference in pricing? It looks like,(baring some very expensive software) that I would pay More and get Less with the comparable Apple machine…
Games are a waste of time. I liked video games when I was a kid, I couldn’t wait to get home and play the latest Super Nintendo game or whatever. But I outgrew that, and games these days aren’t as much fun as they were a decade ago. Now they’re mostly hyper-sadistic, hyper-violent, ultra-realistic gore fests. I’ll pass. I couldn’t care less if the Mac isn’t the ultimate platform for first-person shooters, I think people who waste their lives on those things are pretty pathetic. OSX is a productivity platform. Buy an XBox if you’re 25 and insist on acting like a 15 year old using games to act out your fantasies.
It’s funny about the Mac-vs-PC wars that crop up every once in a while. There’s a vast difference in cultures, and the difference was summed up in a Quark sales brochure a few years ago.
Quark makes XPress, a DTP app (workflow, layout, etc).
The PC version of the flyer was five pages of features, in a bulleted list.
The Mac version of the flyer was five pages of different layouts, showing the capabilities of the app.
The difference between PC4500 and PC133, or almost any technical specification these days it completely marginal, unless you’re doing high-performance work (which most of us don’t). And even then, most users’ need for realtime performance is minimal as well.
Workflow and utility are more important on a daily basis. Every little aggravation costs 20 minutes of time, and that adds up pretty quickly. In the print world (which has high Mac penetration), nobody buys a tool that sucks unless it’s absolutely necessary. A premium is placed on stuff that easy to use and isn’t a pain, because time counts.
Developers know this, and write their apps accordingly.
This sort of attitude has been a hallmark of the MacOS since the beginning. For some people smooth interactions are valuable, and for some people they aren’t. That’s an intangible, but what can you do.
I prefer Macs, and can function in pretty much every OS. For me, the apps and OS on Mac OS X (or 9/8/7/6 in the old days) don’t get in the way of what I want to do. I can’t say that about the other OSs (Win16, Win32, Linux, Solaris, AIX, HPUX). Some tools on each platform are good, but it’s a lot faster to do the job on the Mac than on other platforms.
<shrug>
Workflow and utility are more important on a daily basis.
Not trying to be funny here, but Apple’s workflow is hardly efficient. Infact since I started using a Mac I have not seen anything superior about it. The UI gets in the way half the time. Apple seems very stubborn, not to take anything from other operating systems UI’s. For example a scroll wheel saves a lot of time. Not having to go and drag the scroll bar is useful and streamlines work. Similarly having each Window available with a single click is handy. Expose is an attempt at hiding the inneficiency of the Dock, but the Dock is inneficient and inconsistent. It looks nice though.
When it comes to working quickly every Mac user I have ever seen seems to work at a speed equivalent to molasses running uphill in the middle of a Canadian winter. Admittedly I have only seen about 10 mac users. I have been using a Mac primarily for about 4 months now and I am lot slower on it, despite becoming familiar with the interface.
Anyway, Mac users have got to be the most loyal, and will stick with Mac regardless of how far behind it gets. Mac users are not pragmatic generally, which is a good thing or Apple would have disappeared. So claiming the Mac is about utility is well, ridiculous. Its all about style and snobbery for many. Maybe thats me to, I just always wanted a pwerbook since I first saw it.
I am tired of hearing Mac people talking about drivers, like the Windows is so bad with them. I have never ever had a problem with a driver on XP, but Mac users think that Windows is still Windows 98. My external USB hard drive enclosure works without any drivers in Windows. Yet on Panther it does not work. You have to install drivers on the Mac and it only comes with drivers for Jaguar. So why is it that the ancient XP does not need drivers for USB storage but Panther does?
PS I hate it but right now Apple is the only viable alternative to MS and they are about incredibly stubborn closed to any ideas other than there own. Linux has its own share of problems and other platforms don’t have the users. Maybe Amiga is our only hope for real competition.
1) Get a mouse with a scroll wheel if it bothers you that much. Scroll wheels work on OS X. If you’re on a laptop, download iScroll2 and that will enable scrolling on the touch pad.
2) Learn the keyboard short cuts. Cmd-Tab and Cmd-` are very important and speed up the way you work with apps. Cmd-H helps you hid apps that you aren’t using. Much better than using the taskbar or whatever it is called under GNOME or XP.
3) Expose is good for somethings, bad for others. When working with multiple windows filled with text files (LaTex files, various other source code) expose is quite useless. When working with images however, it’s a God send.
My USB hard drive enclosure works out of the box with OS X while i need to install drivers on XP. In fact, the XP drivers are poorly written and they cause the system to crash. Stay away from Mentor. They write dodgy drivers.
That said, there are things I dislike about OS X compared to something like GNOME. Font rendering in GNOME is superior, IMHO. I also miss virtual desktops. Expose is fine, but I think virtual desktops are superior.
Multiple monitor support under OS X is broken. The menubar appears on the primary monitor while the application’s window is located on the secondary monitor. How unintuitive is that? Why can’t they have the menubar located on the same monitor as the app window? Apple can call this a feature, but in my book, this is nothing short of a defect.
Wonder if they’ve fixed any of this in time for Tiger?
I hit dell.com and looked at the lowest end model. $300 was a bit more than all the osnews and /. posters promised, but not bad. Then I called to see what it would cost to get Firewire added to it since I didn’t see that option. It would have taken a machine costing three times that and packed with tons of things we didn’t need. The things come with a parallel port but no FW? My take: $600 for FW? You have to be joking.
Except a PCI firewire card is what, $9? Go to newegg, search for firewire card, sort by price. $9 + $5 shipping will get you the card, a cable, and cheesy video editing software.
Insulting generalizations abound!
I’m a Mac power-user, and have been for a long time.
That said, I’m also a power-user for Windows (9x -> 2003 Server), and Linux since 2.2.
I still prefer Mac OS over Windows, and not by some magic ignorance of the last 7 years of Microsoft software. Its because I get more work done.
From dev work, to AV creation and editting, I’ve tried dozens of apps on 5 different platforms, and I keep coming back to Mac OS. It wasn’t the prettiest situation prior to OS X, and for a time Codewarrior on Windows came out on top.
But for my productivity, Mac OS is the all-around winner. Is that worth a few extra bucks for my time and sanity? You betcha.
Just to point out your bias, that price comparison you posted is the exact segment that apple is least and x86 is most competitive in. 1.8Ghz PMac is the lowest selling computer they offer for a reason- its seriously underpowered because apple doesn’t want to marginalize the iMac, and also to make their higher end machines look more appealing. On the other side of the coin, 3Ghz P4 looks fast on paper but its like 4 year old technology, is actually pretty slow, and is on the sweet spot of the PC pricing bell curve. Once you go really high-end, you’ll end up spending $4000+ on a good dual opteron and the same on an upgraded Dual 2.5Ghz Powermac. Low end- $500 bucks for the mac mini with all that software and cutting edge looks is quite a steal, even though you could spend $200 bucks less and get a big plastic dell with nothing worth talking about on it. Also compare the iMacs with an all-in-one lifestyle computer. You’ll find the same thing, pretty competitive.
People in my office consider me almost a tech guy for the windows machines there, so speaking from the vantage point of someone who knows windows (and excel/PPoint) better than the average user, I’d have to say I’m much more productive working in the mac versions! no bull. I actually download stuff at home to churn out saturdays on my powerbook, getting about 2 days worth of work done in a couple hours at most. Plus the added benefit of lower blood pressure
There’s my bias. Take it as you will.
“Buy an XBox if you’re 25 and insist on acting like a 15 year old using games to act out your fantasies. ”
Or if you’re 35 and acting like a 15 year old. But you haven’t lived until you’ve done Burnout 3. It’s the most insane game I’ve ever seen. The first lap you’re okay, but by the fifth lap, especially after a couple of particularly graphic and horrendous crashes, your nerves are stretched thin, your knuckles are white from gripping the controller, and you can feel your heart palpitating. When the race is finally over and you put down that controller, you’re ready for a tranquilizer. Hey, you can’t do that in real life and walk away from it. And this comes from somebody who’s done some crazy shit IRL.
the mac os is a better designed product, and any interface expert you talk to will tell you that, unless they have at some point worked for microsoft.
that means your concentration will be improved, your efficiency will go up, your frustrations will go down, and at the end of the day you wont be as tired.
feature-wise, osx blows xp out of the water. check out automator and spotlight, and try and do that in windows. look at quartz extreme, or the whole services thing. compare bash to dos.
personally, that is worth 500$ to me. i have no need of any windows specific apps, and most of what i use in linux i enjoy more anyways.
so why wouldnt i buy a mac? either the amount of time required to learn a new os is unacceptable (as of now, i have learned macos7, windows from 98 to me and nt4 to xp, a few forms of linux, freebsd, be, and am currently playing with solaris), which for me is obviously not the case, the last 20 years or so of HCI studies are full of crap (which i dont believe to be the case), or my effincy, stress level, and productivity cant be justified by an additional 500$.
so anyways, in the next few months i will be ordering a powerbook at ~3k cdn (which is quite resonable, speccing a similar dell or toshiba is closer to 2-3 hundred less). nothing i have read here in any way impacts that desision (the vast majority of the anti-mac points are regarding price, which as i have already addressed, comes after quality for me).
so to the windows guys, really, im completely unimpressed with how little you value your energy.
to the mac guys, please, stop trying to explain things. often, you dont fully understand what you are talking about, and come off as lunatics. even if you dont, you dont want thousands of windows users switching, they will bring their virii, malware, and awful standards of quality with them.
@Viro
You have got to be kidding…. Consoles are sold for about $200. Good luck finding a computer for $200 that can play games at 1600×1200. heck, good luck finding a computer for $200 that runs today’s software acceptably.
Console price range is up to at least $300 in my book. We are at the end of a console generation right now. $500 would be about the top I would consider. Needless to say I don’t need monitor, keyboard or mouse. I probably can use a spare hard drive too.
@Anonymous (IP: —.west.biz.rr.com)
Is World of Warcraft still closed?
It would be sad to buy a PC just for that, and not be able to get in.
Nope. I already own it, and it is not restricted to how many machines it can be installed on, or what platform it can be installed on. Of course piracy is impossible since you can only be logged in on one machine at a time.
@rockwell
Uhh … WoW is availble for OS X ..
Yes, I know. I play it on a new iBook. It is playable but still leaves me wanting more speed. Raids involving large numbers of players are horribly slow. Part of that is lag, but part is rendering.
I’m not talking daily playing, I’m talking two 100 player forces duking it out.
I still have not found any benchmarks or info.
Rather than spending $1000 bucks on an ibook and then another $500 bucks on a PC to run one game, you probably should have gotten a 15″ powerbook- more power for your work and everything else, runs WoW @ full settings between 30-50 fps (depending on if you’re in IF or just running in the desert), and then you don’t have to have another computer cluttering up your desk with another ugly box. Too late now, though.
I have my Pbook and a $1000+ PC desktop and i don’t bother to play it on the desktop. (actually haven’t bothered to set up the desktop since i moved)
Console price range is up to at least $300 in my book. We are at the end of a console generation right now. $500 would be about the top I would consider. Needless to say I don’t need monitor, keyboard or mouse. I probably can use a spare hard drive too.
The XBox currently costs $149 in Amazon. They debut at about $299. Good luck rigging up a machine that runs games at 1600×1200 with no slowdowns.
I know this may come as a shock, but Macs really weren’t designed with gaming in mind. They’ve been — by and large — professional machines, not toys.
But with Apple’s base slowly expanding, the kids will wanna play. So you’ll see steady improvement in Mac gaming capabilities. It won’t happen fast, but it will happen.
In the meantime, if you’re a hard core gamer, buy a Wintel box. You’ll get better performance on the current crop of games. More bang for the buck, too.
There are plenty of reasons to own a Mac beyond gaming.
@MattB
the mac os is a better designed product, and any interface expert you talk to will tell you that, unless they have at some point worked for microsoft
Funny guy… “Interface Expert” – yeah, the same people that came up with erogonomic chairs right? To me, the Mac is the most counter-intuitive computer I’ve ever used… Just stupid things like being able to close all the program windows yet the program is still running… Doesn’t help that at times it’s fans seem so cultish as to make linux fanboys appear almost reasonable.
As to “Stop the Trolling” why is saying you dislike something automatically trolling. Saying “Oh, it’s a piece of {censored} you {censored}” all by itself is trolling. Saying you dislike it and giving actual reasons WHY is not. I’m getting really sick of that on multiple sites… GOD FORBID someone should disagree with the cults of Mac, Linux and/or OSS…
you must be very wise and smart there… you know…. thinking intuitive means “does what I have learned.”
see.. with that logic, windows is the most counter intuitive OS I have ever used because when I close an app window it closes the app.